protar

I do worry though that when there's a cool actor/character or two involved they lose sight of things and fail to plan things out too far. The Arya/Tywin scenes, or the Ygritte scenes in S2 for example.

Possibly, it could potentially work like that and I hope it does. I really hope that D+D were thinking through the implications of changing a delicate spider's web (if you'll pardon the pun.) and have planned ahead for that rather than just writing the scene for some witty banter. I'm not overly hopeful tbh.

When it comes to secret plots Varys knowing is more damaging to LF's schemes than a hundred others knowing. Like I say, why would Varys oppose LF in manipulating Sansa now, but then just ignore Sansa later? Makes no sense.

The scene doesn't make sense because it creates the plot hole of how on earth LF is going to smuggle Sansa out of KL when quite literally everybody and their grandmother knows what he's up to? Specifically Varys knowing creates a plot hole. Why would he be hell bent on opposing LF's plans for Sansa now, but not be able to track her to the Vale later?

It's a little something called sarcasm. She's taking the stereotypical sexist views of women in society and turning it against someone she sees as sexist. She's comparing him to a women as you say later in your post, but the male view of a woman, not the reality. You don't have female friends who make "stay in the kitchen" jokes? I might pop over there to see why exactly one of the most faithful scenes in the episode was botched. Let me guess - Beric wasn't a complete skeleton? His speech wasn't from the books? And people call me unreasonable.

Agree on the last two and about Dracarys being awesome, but disagree about most everything else. I have my worries about Theon's story and how confusing they are, but thought the material here was good overall. Thought the BWB scenes were excellent and seeing as (aside from tweaked dialogue) it was almost exactly the same as the books I fail to see how it was botched. I assume you're referring to the "you sound like a bloody woman" line, in calling Brienne a sexist. I really disagree here, I thought it was quite clear that if Brienne meant anything by her comment it was mocking sexism and Westerosi attitudes towards women.

Gave it a 9. I really wish I could give an 8.5 because I never give 10 (that would imply a perfect episode) and reserve nine for the absolute top notch. But it was also much better than E3 which I can an 8. So I'll generously round it up to a 9. And that's definitely because of both the mutiny at Crasters and of course Dracarys! I had my quibbles but hey, like I say no episode will ever be perfect.

Yes, others have put 2 and 2 together and gotten 3 :P I think it very unlikely that Ros will play the role of Fake!Arya. Either they introduce Jeyne this season in LF's brothel, or Ramsay will marry Talisa, using her position as Robb's former queen to boost his authority. I was going to say that Ros would most likely be killed by LF after the PW but apparently we haven't seen the last of Ser Dontos, which suggests he will be taking the fall as in the books. So I'm not sure what Ros will be doing, but I really can't see what role she might play in the end game.

Gave it an 8, a one up over the last two episodes. Aside from the last scene and Dany's scene there weren't really any super awesome stand out scenes, but unlike the last two episodes there weren't any I hated either. And I thought Pod the Pimp was funny even though it could have been a bit shorter. ETA: Actually the Stannis scene wasn't too cool but other than that it was good.

Not necessarily. Mel can see Gendry in the flames and Stannis (who visited him with Jon Arryn) will either recognise the description or be shown the vision and point out that "hey that's my bro's bastard"

Thoros is an example of good adaptation because he's combining two characters, (Thoros and Tom o Sevens) into one, which creates a very vibrant character and saves screen time. That's how things should be done. Also Thoros is hardly a major character. Cat is. I think it's understandable that people are more upset at changes to Cat than to Thoros.

Fair enough. Agree to disagree. I'm sorry but you're just missing the subtleties of Tyrion's character plain and simple. He's smart about books, stupid about women. Lots of people are like that. I'm like that. It is in no way unrealistic. Killing Shae in the books affects Tyrion so much because 1.) his personal kill count isn't that high. Prior to this he's only directly killed people in battle when his life depended on it. 2.) He was in love with Shae. The fact that she was a whore all along and didn't love him makes it all the more tragic to me. Shae gets more screentime yes. But my point is that both could have been written much better in the time they got. Tyrion's flaw ruining things for himself because he has an unhealthy relationship with women. He also displays intellectual hubris because guess what? Characters can have multiple flaws. Tyrion is not necessarily obsessed with women in that he can't keep it in his pants. He's obsessed because he lost the love of his life early on and is looking to fill that void. He uses prostitutes for that, but once he believes he's found love again he's entirely monogamous. Which again is part of the entire dynamic they have, it's not the entire thing. Bottom line is that D+D have vastly simplified what was a very complex and messy relationship into a stereotypical tragic love story. The nuance has been lost imo.

I don't get that complaint either. Pretty much all of her lines are directly transcribed from the books and Riggs delivery was just as I wanted it to be imo.

Is there any indication that Robb mistrusts Roose?

I'm sorry but I just don't feel that Sibel Kikelli can act. I admittedly haven't seen her in anything else, but tbh it doesn't really matter if she's winning Emmy's elsewhere - it doesn't change the fact that her performance here is imo, awful. It just sounds so wooden and stilted. The problem is not the accent. Oh yes, how silly of Tyrion, being hung up over murdering someone. She was just a gold-digger he shouldn't have cared. And yes he very well should fall for that sort of thing: as you say yourself characters should have flaws. Tyrion's is his issues with love and with women. Well I agree here entirely. A fan of Talisa I am not. But it's not a matter of focus. Both characters have sizeable amounts of screen time and both could have been written equally well. Instead both were written equally worse. But that's the whole point of her interactions with Tyrion: that she is, in the end just a prostitute who doesn't care for Tyrion, demonstrating Tyrion's big, major flaw. Having Shae be genuine in her affections takes away from that. And like Talisa, it's another instance of D+D's obsession with sassy badass women, turning every single character they can into such and neglecting those that they can't. And then of course there's the bad acting.

Which is exactly what happens in the show as well.... or am I missing something.

I gave it a 7/10, same as last week even though I liked it a tad less. It was overall decent but I guess it just wasn't really memorable enough. I didn't agree with everything in last week's episode but virtually all of it stuck out. Here, not so much. A lot of it felt like filler and just recapping what had already happened, I felt like there could have been more progression. But mostly it was a good episode, I thought that the Bran and Arya scenes were perhaps the best. I'm enjoying Thoros immensely and seeing a lot of Tom O sevens in him.

Larger than life characters work fine on screen. Look at the Spice King for example. He was pretty much the only good thing about Qarth and it was because he was hamming it up all over the place. If they'd written Tormund as he is in the books I'd say he'd be a guaranteed favourite. As it is I'm worried he'll just be seen as some generic grumpy wildling. And his character hasn't been toned down from what I've heard - it's been outright inverted.

It's a perfectly valid criticism. If something is changed from the books unnecessarily than it is perfectly valid to criticise D+D for that. Now fortunately this episode wasn't so bad in that regard. There were invented scenes but only ones on par with what we got in S2, and the plot deviations were fixing previous mess ups. It seems that so far the season is on track to be somewhere between S1 and S2 in terms of faithfulness which I can tolerate.

One thing I did think was a mistake was the lack of new characters introduced. That can bog down an opening episode but it can also move the plot forward which I felt was rather lacking in KL. KL was pretty much all a recap of S2 E10. I would've replaced the orphan scene with the QOT's arrival and then maybe had her dinner meeting with Sansa instead of the scene with LF at the docks.

It worked, but I was surprised it wasn't worked into the episode itself. The scene with the Unsullied would have been a perfect spot for it.

Also, I would have thought that we'd actually get the line Valar Dohaeris in this episode, but apparently not. I guess I should be pleased that there was an exclusive nod to book readers.

I voted 7. Very good. My main nitpick is that we didn't get to see the battle at the Fist, which I feel was a bit of a copout. I also feel like more could have been covered: in KL at least it felt like not much was going on. The QOT at least could have arrived. My favourite scene was definitely the Unsullied. It was probably the most faithful to the books (possibly edged out by Tywin/Tyrion.) which I also loved and it got Dany's story off to a speeding start. Aside from the copout at the Fist, the CGI was very impressive. The dragons look much bigger, the manticore was cool and the Giant looked amazing. I am very much looking forward to seeing them in action. Probably my least favourite scene was the Sansa/LF one, making Sansa look like an idiot trusting him (in complete contradiction to how she reacts to him IN S2 E10 mind you.). I can't decide whether the ship game was to show that she was still remaining idealistic or that she was still remaining naive. EDIT: Also for some reason I thought Loras's unctuous smiling at the dinner scene was hilarious.

What has that got to do with anything?

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